


Midnight Song

by Amelior8or



Series: Drarryland 2019 [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Training, Fluff, M/M, Ministry of Magic (Harry Potter), Paperwork, and budding friendship, and some irresponsible paperwork practices, bad singing, mostly incomplete paperwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 19:16:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18058454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amelior8or/pseuds/Amelior8or
Summary: It's one thing to stay late at work to finish your paperwork. It's another thing entirely to have to listen to Potter's rotten singing while you do.





	Midnight Song

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: A new nextdoor neighbor/roommate keeps singing very badly at all hours of the night. Must include the word "earsplitting" - Minimum: 450 words - Maximum: 1150 words. 

He could hear it through the pipes.

And Circe’s _tits_ it was awful.

Draco pushed his chair back from his desk, feeling it bump into the door to his office. It was the smallest of all the offices given to the Auror trainees, only _exactly_ big enough to fit a small, cheap desk. Even with his chair out of the way, the door could only open three-quarters of the way before it knocked into the desk drawer that wouldn’t properly close, jarring the unstable lighting charm into flickering violently for a minute or so.

Potter’s office was massive compared to Draco’s. It took two whole strides to get from the door to the desk, _and_ they gave him a window. It was where all the other trainees would gather whenever they wanted to avoid doing their paperwork, collecting doodled artwork and flowers and _an extra damn chair_ , all donated with the intent of making Potter as comfortable as possible.

Which is why Potter had no excuse to wander out of his office and into the downstairs bathroom to sing like a collapsing accordion whenever he felt bored.

Draco manoeuvred himself out of his chair and squeezed out the door, heading to the stairs. The downstairs bathrooms were the closest to the trainee offices, and used almost constantly. Draco knew this because his office was, of course, directly above the bathrooms, allowing him to hear every single miserable flush that came out of them.

Potter was sitting on the counter by the sinks, kicking his scuffed shoes, examining the mould on the ceiling, singing. He more or less had the tune, but seemed to have no idea what all the words were, and so would mumble-hum every few bars until he got to a snatch he remembered again. He sang with gusto, though, letting the acoustics of the bathroom reverberate his voice in winding, off-key echoes.

“Potter, you need to bloody stop that, or the grindylows are going to get ideas about mating season in here and start coming up the pipes,” Draco said.

Potter blinked, and looked over at the door where Draco was standing. “Malfoy! I didn’t realize you were here. It’s the middle of the night on a Friday. I thought I was the only one around.”

“I’m always around late, trying to finish all that blasted paperwork,” Draco said. “What’s your excuse for being here? All the other trainees are at the pub.”

Potter gave an unrepentant shrug. “Finishing all that blasted paperwork. Everyone keeps interrupting me in my office during the day and I never get to the end of the pile. I always think they might actually need help, but half the time they just to want to… chat.”

“Mmm hmm. You poor thing,” Draco drawled, emphasizing every absent ounce of sympathy he felt for that particular situation. “Is bathroom wailing a new strategy for finishing the paperwork, then? Do your yowls scare your quills into filling it out for you?”

“Merlin, I _wish_ ,” Potter said with such sincerity that Draco had to bite back a startled snicker. “I bet you’d even _beg_ me to sing, if it helped get yours done, too.”

“I can see it now,” Draco said. The corners of his mouth were twitching now, more upward than downward, and he didn’t even want to stop them. “The tales would spread far and wide. The Boy Who Lived To Wail Paperwork Into Submission.”

“Nah, I wouldn’t let a powerful secret like that get out. It’d just be for you and me,” Potter said, and the corners of his mouth were also twitching, very noticeably upward. He paused, flicked his eyes from the tiles, to Draco’s face, to his shoes, and back to Draco’s face. “Maybe it’d help make up for things a bit, for the way they’re treating you.”

Draco saw it, then, how this conversation could go. Potter would try and bring up why exactly Draco gets the worst assignments, the most paperwork, the hardest evaluations, and the smallest office. Draco would make a pointed remark about why exactly Potter shows up every morning looking like he hadn’t slept at all the night before. The words would turn into barbs, and every second would become an increasingly tense reminder of what had happened the last time Draco and Potter were alone in a bathroom together.

But Draco decided that he didn’t want that. Not in this moment, in the middle of the night in an old bathroom with echoing pipes. He didn’t want to be the rival, or the antagonist, or the one who never got invited to pub nights.

He just wanted to be a person joking with his coworker about avoiding the paperwork. A person who might, someday, have this coworker as a friend.

And so he said, “A voice like yours could never stay a secret. Especially not if you keep planning on blasting it through these poor belaboured pipes.”

“It’s not _that_ bad, is it?” Potter asked. “I thought I sounded okay.”

“Potter, it’s earsplitting.”

Potter’s mouth let out something suspiciously close to a chortle. “Can you do better, then? Is carrying a tune one of those weird posh things they train you in, like with using too many different forks and flouncing down a marble staircase?”

“It absolutely is, and I guarantee I’m a better singer than you,” Draco agreed. “Mind, a kneazle is a better singer than you, so that’s barely a boast.”

“Oh, really?” scoffed Potter, folding his arms and raising his eyebrows. “I’ll only believe that with evidence. One of these nights when we’re both here alone, you’re going to sing for me.”

Draco’s twitching lips slackened in surprise as he realized what he meant. What Potter was offering was a statement of intent, a promise of future interaction. Even after Draco had come down here to shout about the singing.

“Fine, someday, but not in here,” Draco said. “There’s better places to go in the Ministry in the middle of the night than the bathrooms for a bit of caterwauling. Personally, I prefer the abandoned star charting chambers.”

“Isn’t that the place where Annie Waxim and Georgia Kettlecott were caught last week?” Potter asked. “The ‘secret’ Ministry snogging spot?”

“Had many offers to go there from the witches and wizards passing through your office?” Draco asked in return. “Or is it you offering to show them around the chambers?”

“ _No_ ,” Potter said, flushed and flustered. “I didn’t even know where they are.”

Draco paused, took a breath, then said: “Would you like me to show you where they are?”

Draco saw Potter grin. It was a slow grin, but it was definitely there on his face, growing into that quintessentially Gryffindor expression that probably dragged him through every single one of his untoward adventures.

“I absolutely would,” Potter said, hopping down from the counter. “Lead the way, Malfoy.”

**Author's Note:**

> Draco's office is an exact replica of an office I once had as a sessional instructor, right down to the flickering lights.
> 
> A very kind thank you to the lovely orpheous87 for offering to beta my first fic for this fest, which just happens to be my first fic for this fandom, and my first completed for since 2009!


End file.
